To be honest, you don’t actually need an agency to run your social media efforts. That is, if you’re willing to dedicate your own time to responding to countless comments, running your adverts, removing negative comments and banning people on the page.
You also need to devote time to creating relevant content, editing videos, images & infographics, strategising new ways to market your products, creating conversations, attracting new consumers, updating all your social media platforms, identifying a crisis when it happens, and constantly reinventing your brand online.
If you’re on social media, and you’re not taking all these factors into account, then you’re probably doing your own business an injustice.
Engaged Consumers
First, let’s take a look at the statistics of Social media users in South Africa according to www.webafrica.co.za:
- 13 million Facebook users.
- 7.4 million Twitter users.
- 8.28 million YouTube users.
- 2.68 million Instagram users.
These stats for social media users in South Africa clearly show that there are a lot of consumers who are actively engaging on social media platforms, and that means there’s a lot of opportunity for brands like yourself to take advantage of the constantly growing social media trend, and hopefully attracting a lot of them to your business. But to do it effectively, it’s important to have a dedicated social media manager, whether in-house or from an agency.
Getting Social
The first question is, of course, are you even on social media? Do people know you exist? Do you know what opportunities are out there for social media marketing, and how to take advantage of them? Or are you missing out on some online business opportunities?
Social media allows your business to interact with your brand’s online communities, share information about products & services and create brand content.
It can help you generate leads, manage expectations, and create positive perceptions. But it’s not all as easy as it sounds. It also lets you receive feedback from the social media community, engage with them and understand what you brand is doing right or wrong & how to change perceptions towards building a great brand.
But those communities include frustrated consumers that will post a negative comment on every post you’ve shared, and dealing with that sort of thing can be an exhausting task.
Using Social Media Management
There are a lot of business opportunities online that could generate an ROI for your business but you have to understand how to do right.
Social media management can give your brand a personality, an online voice, an online sales representative, a community manager to put out all the fires (like removing all the negative comments from your social media pages & managing complaints), a content creator to create all the relevant brand content, a online brand manager that will advocate your brand and, most importantly, connect your brand to your target audiences at the right time with the right message (and tone) through conversation.
People are not just looking at brands just to find a product or service, they also often need a brand that is able to build a community by being personable & understand their frustrations.
They want brands that offer more than just the marketing speak, but also add human element to their approach. A social media manager maintains a positive perception of the brand/business through creating branded content while maintaining conversations with your online community on how the product / service serves to meet the needs of the community.
Why Manage Your Social Media?
Social Media management provides brands with timely and “in the moment” customer interaction by responding and attending to queries. Providing your online community with the information they need, when they need it, social media managers are at the forefront of your business online presence.
(You can think of them as your brand’s soldiers, defending and making sure that your brand is guarded against angry consumers), making decisions on how to deal with an online crises and directing all the queries to relevant people.
Get an agency that understands your business and is passionate to share it with the rest of the world, and you’ll have a dedicated team that will put your business above all your competitors. Online soldiers that are working everyday to make your brand the best it can be.